US has no good options in Ukraine
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Anonymous
Anonymous
1. He didn't need to do much while Trump was in office. Trump gave him our bases in Syria, tried to get the sanctions lifted, exposed some of our intelligence, accepted the Crimea grab and put pressue on Ukraine himself. But most importantly Trump damaged NATO and the European Alliance. There was no need for Putin to do anything when Trump was doing it for him. Had there been a second term the job would have been complete. 2. Putin's goal isn't territorial expansion, Crimea excepted, it's the weakening/destruction of NATO and the Western alliance. What Putin wants from Ukraine is compliance. It is quite happy with Ukraine and Belarus as client states. In fact that is his preferred outcome. The cost and lack of defensible ground make Belarus and Ukraine hard to defend. A much better solution for him is that he controls them without being in day to day control. As our dear cross cultural communication Russophile friend keeps pointing out, invasion is not Putin's goal for the troop buildup. Crimea though was different. That was about Ukraine's Black Sea energy deposits which further solidified Russian control of the European gas market. 3. You are right though that he views Biden and the US as weak though. He knows the divisions that have been sowed. He knows how toxic our internal dynamic is. Meanwhile Germany has a new government, Turkey has Erdogan, France will always be French, and Poland/Romania/Baltics have questions about NATO resolve. He knows that NATO was on the brink under Trump and that Ukraine has the potential to irreparably destroy the alliance. |
Anonymous
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I don’t know what all the handwringing is about. I don’t think we will risk war against the Russians over Ukraine nor do I think we are prepared to (the Army has admitted itself it’s not ready to wage a conventional war against a near-peer competitor). I would not support it either as Ukraine is not worth one drop of US blood.
What do the Europeans want? The only country I see somewhat itching for a fight in Europe are the Poles but they always have a chip on their shoulder, especially Russians. That said we can use economic and diplomatic tools to try to change Russian behavior. |
Anonymous
Holy crap, open a history book. The USSR committed genocide in the Ukraine and tried to purposefully starve to death the Ukrainians under Stalin. Nearly 4 million Ukrainians were killed by the soviets during Holomodor. There's even a damn Holomodor memorial in DC to remember the genocide! Yet we are just supposed to forget history and allow Putin to recapitulate the days of Ukraine under Stalin? |
Anonymous
'War crimes' against invaders who occupied your own country? That's simply absurd. |
Anonymous
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Does anyone care that the U.S. has some hypersonic thing? Nobody does, it is not the race to the moon anymore.
Also, I recommend you all read up a bit on the dispute from a different point of view. For example, in Crimea, you know where the ethnic Russians voted in a referendum to secede from Ukraine. You know how Croatia voted and was then supported by NATO and the U.S. in their efforts, but now these ethnic Russians do not have the same right? On the topic of the U.S. political supremacy, and military supremacy, yes, militarily it is the "bestest" in the world, no questions. Politically it has lost almost all cred. I do not recall a time when the U.S. started a war with another huge nuclear power, even the two World Wars were a slow drag in when Japan attacked the U.S. I certainly do not want to see the Americans die over old European territorial squabbles. Third, Russia is doing what the U.S. has done for decades, trying to topple governments. |
Anonymous
| JFC Biden sh*t the bed during his press conference. The guy is a deteriorating mess who is truly unfit for the office. His comments on Ukraine and Putin were so unnecessarily rambling and provocative. |
Anonymous
This is true. It is also true that a huge number of Ukrainians volunteered in German squads and killed a huge number of Jews. It is also true that parts of Ukraine were in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it is true that they are haters of Jews for centuries. It is also true that Ukraine has almost never been a separate country but a part of the Russian Empire. It is also true that Crimea was not a part of Ukraine until one USSR president gave it to them in 1954. You can find all kinds of wrongs in the world if you look hard enough. You will find that the new population of the U.S. committed genocide of the Native population, engaged in slavery, and kills black people by choking them in public. I am not sure what you think to provoke with your post? Pity, the need to right the wrong? To pain one ethnic group as evil but the other as good? Should we not look at ourselves before we accuse others of being evil? |
Anonymous
Ahhh....whataboutisms. A classic and favorite tactic of communists since 1951! |
Anonymous
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The whole world "senses weakness." How is anyone speaking to POTUS supposed to know if POTUS even knows what his own policy is? We are talking about Ukraine here, supposedly Biden's area of expertise from his time as VP and a major ongoing crisis. How is it that he can't even answer questions from the press without Psaki scribbling out corrections as she watches the press conference? |
Anonymous
And the preferred response on DCUM! |
Anonymous
We had an attenpted coup and not only have we done notbing about that we also have over 40% of the population and 99% of Republican officials that support it. Of course the world sense weakness in the US. |
Anonymous
Nice attempt at trying to deflect from Biden’s clueless comments about Ukraine and Russia. For someone who supposedly has great “foreign policy chops” his response was abysmal. |
Anonymous
Reagan is rolling in his grave. He would not be proud of today's Republican Party. |